Leaves of Grass: First and Death-Bed Editions

by Walt Whitman

  The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,

  I peeringly view them from the top.

  The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,

  I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol

  has fallen.

  The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the

  promenaders,

  The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb,

  the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,

  The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs,

  The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,

  The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the

  hospital,

  The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,

  The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working

  his passage to the centre of the crowd,

  The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,

  What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sun-struck or

  in fits,

  What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home

  and give birth to babes,

  What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what

  howls restrain’d by decorum,

  Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,

  rejections with convex lips,

  I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come and

  I depart.

  -9-

  The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,

  The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,

  The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,

  The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

  I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,

  I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,

  I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,

  And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

  -10-

  Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,

  Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,

  In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,

  Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-kill’d game,

  Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by

  my side.

  The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle

  and scud,

  My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from

  the deck.

  The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,

  I tuck’d my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good

  time;

  You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

  I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,

  the bride was a red girl,

  Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly

  smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick

  blankets hanging from their shoulders,

  On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins,

  his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held

  his bride by the hand,

  She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight

  locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d

  to her feet.

  The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,

  I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,

  Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy

  and weak,

  And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,

  And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and

  bruis’d feet,

  And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him

  some coarse clean clothes,

  And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his

  awkwardness,

  And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;

  He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and

  pass’d north,

  I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

  —11—

  Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,

  Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;

  Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

  She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,

  She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

  Which of the young men does she like the best?

  Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

  Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,

  You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

  Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth

  bather,

  The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

  The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their

  long hair,

  Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

  An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,

  It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

  The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to

  the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,

  They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and

  bending arch,

  They do not think whom they souse with spray.

  —12—

  The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife

  at the stall in the market,

  I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and breakdown.

  Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,

  Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat

  in the fire.

  From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,

  The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive

  arms,

  Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand

  so sure,

  They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

  -13-

  The negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block

  swags underneath on its tied-over chain,

  The negro that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and

  tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,

  His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over

  his hip-band,

  His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his

  hat away from his forehead,

  The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black

  of his polish’d and perfect limbs.

  I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not

  stop there,

  I go with the team also.

  In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as

  forward sluing,

  To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object

  missing,

  Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

  Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade,

  what is that you express in your eyes?

  It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

  My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and

  day-long ramble,

  They rise together, they slowly circle around.

  I believe in those wing’d purposes,

  And acknowledge red, yellow, white, play
ing within me,

  And consider green and violet and the tufted crown

  intentional,

  And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not

  something else,

  And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty

  well to me,

  And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

  —14—

  The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,

  Ya honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an

  invitation,

  The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,

  Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.

  The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill,

  the chickadee, the prairie-dog,

  The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,

  The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread

  wings,

  I see in them and myself the same old law.

  The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,

  They scorn the best I can do to relate them.

  I am enamour’d of growing out-doors,

  Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,

  Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and

  mauls, and the drivers of horses,

  I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.

  What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,

  Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,

  Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,

  Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,

  Scattering it freely forever.

  -15-

  The pure contralto sings in the organ loft,

  The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane

  whistles its wild ascending lisp,

  The married and unmarried children ride home to their

  Thanksgiving dinner,

  The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm,

  The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon

  are ready,

  The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches,

  The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar,

  The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel,

  The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and

  looks at the oats and rye,

  The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case,

  (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s

  bed-room;)

  The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,

  He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blurr with the

  manuscript;

  The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table,

  What is removed drops horribly in a pail;

  The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods

  by the bar-room stove,

  The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat,

  the gate-keeper marks who pass,

  The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I

  do not know him;)

  The half-breed straps on his light boots to compete in the race,

  The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on

  their rifles, some sit on logs,

  Out from the crowds steps the marksman, takes his position,

  levels his piece;

  The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,

  As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them

  from his saddle,

  The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their

  partners, the dancers bow to each other,

  The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the

  musical rain,

  The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron,

  The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering

  moccasins and bead-bags for sale,

  The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half-shut

  eyes bent sideways,

  As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for

  the shore-going passengers,

  The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it

  off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots,

  The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago

  borne her first child,

  The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in

  the factory or mill,

  The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s

  lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign-painter is

  lettering with blue and gold,

  The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his

  desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread,

  The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers

  follow him,

  The child is baptized, the convert is making his first

  professions,

  The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the

  white sails sparkle!)

  The drover watching his drove sings out to them that

  would stray,

  The pedler sweats with his pack on his back (the purchaser

  higgling about the odd cent;)

  The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the

  clock moves slowly,

  The opium-eater reclines with rigid head and just

  open’d lips,

  The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy

  and pimpled neck,

  The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink

  to each other,

  (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you;)

  The President holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the

  great Secretaries,

  On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with

  twined arms,

  The crew of the fish-smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the

  hold,

  The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his

  cattle,

  As the fare-collector goes through the train he gives notice by the

  jingling of loose change,

  The floor-men are laying the floor, the tinners are tinning the

  roof, the masons are calling for mortar,

  In single file each shouldering his hod pass onward the

  laborers;

  Seasons pursuing each other the indescribable crowd is gather‘d,

  it is the fourth of Seventh-month, (what salutes of cannon

  and small arms!)

  Seasons pursuing each other the plougher ploughs, the mower

  mows, and the winter-grain falls in the ground;

  Off on the lakes the pike-fisher watches and waits by the hole in

  the frozen surface,

  The stumps stand thick round the clearing, the squatter strikes

  deep with his axe,

  Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cotton-wood or

  pecan-trees,

  Coon-seekers go through the regions of the Red river or

  through those drain’d by the Tennessee, or through those

  of the Arkansas,

  Torches shine in the dark that hangs on the Chattahoochee or

  Altamahaw,

  Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and

  great-grandsons around them,

  In walls of adobie, in canvas tents, rest hunters and trappers after

  t
heir day’s sport,

  The city sleeps and the country sleeps,

  The living sleep for their time, the dead sleep for their time,

  The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps

  by his wife;

  And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them,

  And such as it is to be of these more or less I am,

  And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

  —16—

  I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

  Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

  Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

  Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff

  that is fine,

  One of the Nation of many nations, the smallest the same and

  the largest the same,

  A Southerner soon as a Northerner, a planter nonchalant and

  hospitable down by the Oconee I live,

  A Yankee bound my own way ready for trade, my joints the

  limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,

  A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my deerskin

  leggings, a Louisianian or Georgian,

  A boatman over lakes or bays or along coasts, a Hoosier, Badger,

  Buckeye;

  At home on Kanadian snow-shoes or up in the bush, or with

  fishermen off Newfoundland,

  At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and

  tacking,

  At home on the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine, or the

  Texan ranch,

  Comrade of Californians, comrade of free North-Westerners,

  (loving their big proportions,)

  Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake

  hands and welcome to drink and meat,

  A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest,

  A novice beginning yet experient of myriads of seasons,

  Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion,

  A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker,

  Prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

  I resist any thing better than my own diversity,

  Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,

  And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

  (The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place,

  The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in